[Diana Sinton]

This manual for Quantum GIS is new to me. Organized as a self-paced tutorial, and comprehensive in its approach.

h/t @adenas

[Diana Sinton]

Hi Carol.  Do you mean a “Community of Practice” across a University?  Or around a particular project?

Best,

Diana

[Diana Sinton]

Today I learned about Peggy Minnis’ collection of GIS tutorial videos.  She teaches at Pace University and is preparing to launch a GIS 101 MOOC.   Looking forward to seeing how that develops!

[Diana Sinton]

Nice collection of resources developing here!   Jon – yes, that Public Laboratory site (PLOTS) has info on guiding beginners on these balloon and kite mapping projects.

Jeremy Crampton at the University of Kentucky is also using these systems with his undergrad students; here’s a story about his work.

Diana

[Diana Sinton]

Jorge,  thanks for sharing these resources.  It’s great to keep track of materials that are produced in a range of languages!  Keep up the good work!  You’re always welcome to tell others about the availability of these here.  I started a discussion thread just on tutorials too, and you could post these to there.

Diana

[Diana Sinton]

Hi Senthil.  Probably you’ll find more ideas and suggestions from other LinkedIn groups, as you noted, and other sources of professionally-related information.  It really depends on what you want to do after your student years, whether you want to work directly with GIS as a career or you are learning GIS as needed to do something else (be a biologist that will be interpreting spatial patterns, for example).

Here is a fairly recent posting on the topic of GIS Skills, for example.   From the educational perspective, different programs aim to align themselves with different types of GIS-related learning outcomes.  Some programs strive to align directly with the Dept of Labor’s Geospatial Technology Competency Model, like this one at Salt Lake Community College.   Meanwhile, many programs follow content within the GIS & T Body of Knowledge as they design their curriculum, and this is a very broad collection of “knowledge” that is needed within a lot of different industries.  So there’s no one answer to your question.

You might find this article interesting, Skills in Professional Geography: An Assessment of Workforce Needs and Expectations Solem et al., 2008,, Professional Geographer).   It’s not only about GIS, but I think it describes important ideas for anyone expecting to do work that is geography-related.

[Diana Sinton]

That’s great, Kelly!  Reminds me of when I was trying to remember details about an historic map and ended up with this situation, thinking of ancient folks sabotaging metadata.

[Diana Sinton]

Hi Bill. Great to see you here!  I hope the site can live up to our expectations. We dream big!

I think highly of the GIS Stack Exchange and made a direct link to it here.  You’re right, being both accessible and meaningful is a fine line.  People are fickle, and the amount of time it takes to become invested in these kinds of online communities is precious and in short-supply. So a site cannot afford to be laissez-faire.  It’s rarely a build-it-and-they-will-come situation.  I actually do like the ways in which StackExchange (nicely) manipulates participation with the tiny incentives.  Give an answer, earn a prize.  There must be a whole new field of business psychology about the strategies and tactics of building online communities.

I expect that those of us nurturing this site will have to be one step ahead of the curve to build our community. This may involve social media, promotions, marketing, and moving into the 21st century with academic scholarship. Sharing something as a White Ppaer, and reaching a wide audience, instead of submitting something to a journal and reaching few. I hope to reach into the Scholarship of Teaching (and Learning) around geospatial technologies and bridge some research/practice divides with this site.

Using and improving these sites. A great discussion topic to continue with others as well. We’ll start a new thread!

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